Adgully Exclusive | OOH Media's Baagyalakshmi Nagarajan, selling the idea of TV outside of home

Our lives are governed by a "screen' of some sorts at all times. Advertisers have taken every opportunity to ensure that all brands are seen by us, the consumers. Out of Home (OOH) screen advertising has been popular in the digital signage for a while now. This is especially possible with consumers spending more time outside their homes now, so all kind of out of home advertising that includes bill board; ambient advertising and the like are very effective.

As LCD screens are now available with built in media players at reasonable rates, companies now opt for this medium to have video messages that can reach out to consumers at the point where purchase is made. These screens are placed in public areas like a mall or a café or at traffic signals. This enables advertisers to associate their target audience in key settings and has a more effective reach.

Baagyalakshmi Nagarajan, Director ' Sales (South), OOH Media Pvt Ltd talks exclusively to Adgully about this medium and her association with the same.

"Since we have evolved we have established a team of competent professionals for a new medium. As a team we have managed to have most clients sample and use the medium and getting them converted into more repeat clients into the profile base. Initially South had a few clients in basket but down the line we have most of the categories from the first long term association from Finance to telecom, automobile, Tourism, Media, FMCG, Retail, etc." she said.

In South, outdoor advertising have been most widely used. With the growth of more malls and multiplexes, this medium has found a very strong clientele in this market.

"In South, clients have always used outdoor. It is a predominant medium. Now Digital Out of home is also very visible given the growth of malls, multiplexes, commercial complexes, etc. We have our locations in Chennai, Bangalore & Hyderabad in the South. The south market has tried the medium and about 20-25% of them form a repeat customer base. BPO/IT parks have been used extensively by a large pool of clients as it does house a large proportion of media dark audiences. Researches of campaigns have shown appreciable recall scores for a product/brand. In Chennai, lack of outdoor has opened up retail clients to our medium to an extent. Bangalore has had a wide array of corporate clients using our medium. What is definitely interesting is, the medium's reach with PSUs headquartered in Tier 1 & Tier 2 markets as well," she explained.

Finance, Telecom, Auto, Tourism, Media are all showing promising potential in the OOH growth story. This sector is growing at a tremendous rate and is one of the fastest growing sectors.

"Whilst these are generally high spenders, what will garner us the share is the innovative ways in which this medium can add to their communication needs. For example The Automobile category has used the Flexicasting module ' very unique to OOH as a platform, effectively. The client invested in 4 weeks of airtime and advertised for multiple brands with different creatives in different clusters simultaneously. Insurance client use different clusters for different policies ' all at the same time. We also became footfall drivers to an FMCG personal product mall activity across multiple cities when the client engaged in Ringfencing ' it is a process of speaking/advertising your communication on OOH screens to your TG in and around 5 -10 km of the proposed activity/location. So OOH's inclusion in a plan is defined by the micro need of a plan, if you want," she further added.

However this medium also has a varied set of challenges. How does one measure the affectivity of this medium? Nagarajan goes on to say that it wasn't an easy task to engage consumers with a television screen outside their homes. "A new medium of communication was in itself a challenge ' a prospect of engaging with a TV screen outside of home ' it was addressed with scale. A medium with no measurement ' this was again addressed through OOH Metrics which is today India's first ever large scale digital Out-Of-Home TV research. Out-of-Home media conducted this research in association with Nielsen - world's leading provider of marketing information and audience measurement with the sample size of 15,000- largest ever sample size taken for any study done so far. Creatives ' whilst this medium can be used even if one didn't have a TVC, exclusive creatives for this medium to address audiences on the move is still a challenge. To an extent we have worked on solutions for clients with jpegs, hoarding adaptations, editing of a TV commercial with supers, etc," she explained.

Clients are slowly warming up to this medium of advertising and are convinced as they see the results of this medium. Nagarajan further said, "We have had early adopters, fence sitters and embracers of the medium. In the south, the experiment of the medium has been a continuous process. The trajectory has by and large been similar to national clients, Finance ' be it banking or mutual funds have and are adding OOH into their media dossier, followed by Automobile players. Retail from Chennai has been a good story post the no-hoardings era began; Hyderabad had a good presence from both Tourism and real estate & we are seeing a revival of interest. Overall most categories have used us in the South including Tourism, Consumer Durables, IT Organizations, FMCG, Apparel & accessories, Regional units of Telecom players & Auto, etc has been similar to the national graph."

OOH Media Company has done some remarkable work, which are notable within the industry. "Some innovations that have been executed regionally like the Nokia fabrication, or Manipal education's sandboard on our screens, or Flexicasting by an automobile client, a huge collection of creatives exclusively on our screens are all an interesting mix of work on this medium. We have embarked on creating city specific content in regional languages in the Southern states," she said.

"The growth is likely to be steady and will have more and more players using the medium. The crux that consumers/viewers spend more and more time outside of home is beginning to be an established fact. Also half of India's population is believed to be less than 25 years of age. Going by consumer habits of this generation, the usage of locations where OOH screens are, seems inevitable. Hence the marketers will continue to align their communication to this segment. The outlook of the clients, the specialist agencies and also the media owners has undergone sea change and Digital OOH Media is become a part of the media plan. Innovation and quality audience and reach will be the benchmarks that clients will use to judge us," she commented on the future of this medium.

According to Nagarajan this medium is here to stay and grow extensively with the population demographics. "Much is dependent on this and consumer behaviour trends of the young and affluent population is in a way dictating where, how and when they can be reached and addressed. In that context, the presence and usage of locations where our screens are and will be, is bound to become a critical component of communication in times to come," she said. | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]